MSNBC faced a wave of embarrassment on as hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Jonathan Capehart issued on-air corrections after falsely claiming that U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had described President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as “very good friends.”
The debacle began during Monday’s broadcast of The 11th Hour, when Ruhle confidently asserted that Gabbard had linked Trump and Putin in a close friendship during a recent interview. “Just today, Tulsi Gabbard said that Putin and Trump are quote ‘very good friends,’” Ruhle told viewers, using the claim to question Trump’s alignment with American values. Her guest, New York Times congressional reporter Luke Broadwater, ran with the narrative, suggesting Trump and Putin were “bound together as allies,” a stance he called contrary to decades of U.S. foreign policy.
Later that evening, Capehart doubled down on the misinformation during his own program, attributing the fabricated statement to an interview Gabbard had supposedly given. His guest, former Obama administration official Michael McFaul, reacted with alarm, warning that such a relationship—if true—could embolden Putin’s actions in Ukraine and set a “very dangerous precedent” globally.
The narrative collapsed when the full transcript of Gabbard’s interview with an Indian TV news network emerged. Contrary to MSNBC’s reporting, Gabbard had actually been discussing Trump’s relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—not Putin. The revelation exposed the network’s claims as baseless, prompting swift backlash online.
Facing mounting criticism, Ruhle addressed the error on The 11th Hour. “Last night we reported on excerpts of an interview between the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and an Indian TV news network in which she said that Trump was good friends with a world leader. We said that world leader was Vladimir Putin, but the full interview shows that Gabbard was referring to Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi,” she said in a terse correction on MSNBC.
Capehart followed suit with his own clarification later that night, though the damage was already done. The false narrative had spread rapidly across social media and progressive outlets, amplifying the misinformation before the retractions could catch up.
The incident marks yet another high-profile stumble for MSNBC, raising questions about the network’s fact-checking processes and its coverage of Trump and his administration. Neither Ruhle nor Capehart offered an apology, leaving viewers and critics to debate the broader implications of the error.
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